


He which nourishes me destroys me.

by queen_kumquat



Category: Players - Antonia Forest
Genre: 1500s, 1580s, Cambridge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 06:00:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11914692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_kumquat/pseuds/queen_kumquat
Summary: Lord Essex muses on his and Southampton's fraternal relationship, in the wake of Kit Marlowe's death.





	He which nourishes me destroys me.

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [Lilliburlero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero) in the [Antonia_Forest_Fanworks_2015](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Antonia_Forest_Fanworks_2015) collection. 



> I finally managed to read both Players novels together and saw this request (below). After a few hours on the internet I realised both Essex and Southampton had fathers die at similar ages and both were taken in by Burghley in his capacity of Master of Court of Wards. This would give them a lot in common despite the 10-year age gap, but also both of them would have overlapped a year at Cambridge with a certain Christopher Marlowe...
> 
> I'm not a historian so please tell me about all errors of fact or plausibility. Ideally this story would get expanded to cover their times at Cambridge and pre-Players, but that would need a fair bit more research and inspiration. Though I probably know as much about the era and more about Cambridge than Forest did, "so, after all, why not?"
> 
> Request by Lilliburlero  
> Fandom: Players - Antonia Forest   
>  No rating  
>  Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings  
>  No category  
>  Request Unfulfilled  
> 26 May 2015  
> Tags  
>  Christopher Marlowe (Players) Essex (Players) Southampton (Players)   
> Summary  
>  I'd love a fic about Kit and Southampton's relationship pre-canon, and if you'd like to write about the strains it puts on Southampton's relationship with Essex, that could only be a bonus. If you'd like to bring Will in as Essex-worshipper or reluctant protegé to Southampton's patronage, better again. I love literary allusion, so go wild in that regard. I'm fine with anything from Platonizing romantic m/m friendships to explicit sex for these characters.

May 1593  
It was hard lines on Harry, thought the Earl of Essex, but, really, one couldn't be surprised by young Kit Marlowe’s meeting an untimely end. 

Essex hadn't been fooled by Southampton's protests that Marlowe was simply another fair young man to whom Harry was enjoying paying patronage, and, in return, acquiring the best of new poetry and the odd piece of prose or a play for Harry’s library. With the other protegés - a dozen, or more? - Essex mostly believed Southampton's motive to be the literature just as he professed, but since Marlowe had dazzled young Harry upon the latter's arrival in Cambridge; Harry only thirteen when they'd met, Marlowe a young man, a BA, and already having playscripts accepted, it had been obvious to Essex (and probably to many others, like Walsingham) that Marlowe the man, not just Marlowe the poet, was the jewel in Harry's collection. 

Essex was ever the older brother figure, since Burghley had taken over wardship of Harry as well as himself - both their fathers had died when they were young; Essex (previously Robert Devereux) at ten to Harry’s eight, which created a bond in itself. There were ten years between them; Essex had met young Marlowe shortly after Marlowe came up to Corpus - a cocky scholarship lad, no mere sizar he, determined to be remembered by the aristocrats, and remembered he generally was, mostly for Marlowe's generous offerings of his body rather than for his writing, but as his scribblings improved, his ready-made set of potential patrons, who could see to ensuring his scripts were accepted by the Lord Admiral's players, was probably key to why Marlowe was becoming the name punters looked for, whilst others more talented - Middleton, Jonson - struggled to find players or the Lord Chamberlain’s approval. 

Essex himself hadn't taken advantage of Marlowe's charm - Devereux's vices were reported to be non-existent, but Essex knew that tobacco and gluttony were his sinful secrets - the flesh licence to permit eating of beef on fish days – a third of the year, now – he found a great Godsend. And also vanity, he admitted, as he pulled at his neatly-oiled beard to straighten its sharp point and checked the clasp on his earring - but he would be most surprised if Marlowe hadn't at some point seduced Harry in order to reach Harry's purse more quickly. Act first, react later was Harry's method in life, as opposed to Essex's careful, planned approach. Prometheus and Epimetheus... 

Perhaps he was doing the dead a disservice; perchance there had been real feeling for Harry on Marlowe's part, but then Essex had realised that Marlowe was hanging around more than the recipient of patronage needed to, putting continued pull onto Harry who was always weak when it came to such sins, and despite suddenly having come into money. Marlowe claimed he’d been lucky at dice, or acquired skill at cards, but no-one at Cambridge recalled Marlowe playing. Essex didn’t trust the silver-tongued Kentish lad an inch even before the new flash velvets and gold.

Like most aristocracy, Essex found the bluntly-named Buggery Act amusing, until its power to humiliate was invoked. It had been old King Hal's idea, to make punishable by death that which no man would admit, resulting in additional fodder for denunciations which in turn could be turned against the denouncer as political tides turned. Queen Mary had overturned it as only encouraging petty vindictiveness, and he wouldn't say she was wrong. Whatever one might say of Bloody Mary, she didn't get involved in petty intrigue and gossip. Do her will or lose your head; a simple dilemma. It had been Burghley - still Cecil, then - who had persuaded Queen Bess to reinstate the Act, realising the new young Queen needed a network of intrigue if she were to stay in power despite the Catholics, the Puritans and Jove-knows who else. As a political tool, it worked wonders. As a means to drive out the heresy of sodomy, it was useless - Essex and Burghley before him knew well it was one of the main pastimes at Cambridge, where a thousand young men were cloistered, lacking for entertainment when the Masters cracked down on drinking or dice in the taverns, and after all, both those and candles were expensive. One might as well try to outlaw picking one's nose...

So long as Harry made a respectable marriage, as Essex had done to Frances Walsingham – that should keep him safe from the elder Walsingham’s anti-Papist paranoia - no-one would comment on Harry’s vices - even the playwrights were yet to scoff at his long tresses, knowing who buttered their bread - unless of course he fell foul of a plot. Sympathy for his Catholic friends like the Danvers' was more likely to be Harry's problem, than his endorsement of Marlowe's maxim: that He that who love not Boys and Tobacco is a Fool… But a marriage would be required soon – Burghley had mentioned the young de Vere girl, and Harry could certainly do far worse.

When Essex had heard of Marlowe's arrest in the Netherlands, where he himself had been fighting under Burghley not six months before, the fact of Marlowe's travel there had been unknown to both of them; thus it was clear Marlowe was spying, presumably setting about incriminating Catholics, and so Marlowe became someone Southampton, sympathiser to the Faith and friend of known dissidents such as the Danvers family, absolutely could not afford to keep company with. He'd put the situation plain to Harry, and Harry had gone white but taken it as more of a man than Essex had feared, given the closeness had, apparently, been even more than Harry had let slip previously.

Marlowe had come by soon after, all quick tongue and fine breeches, and Southampton had refused to see him. Suddenly both Harry and Essex were looking beneath the charm and wit, seeing the danger and violence beneath - like that vicious toad of Walsingham's, Poley. Essex suspected that part of Poley’s general antipathy to Southampton, expressed in asides at Court over the years, stemmed from jealousy of Essex and Southampton having been admitted as students while Poley had had to effectively beg and serve for his education, and wondered if it had ever occurred to Poley the amount of effort Harry put in so as to be rated as a scholar rather than a dilettante. Harry suffered agonies of insecurity, fearing he was seen as (or, perhaps, was?) a mere dim aristocrat who’d been palmed off with a degree but had no intellectual merit. Hence the patronage of so many brains and the determination to collect the finest literature of Europe.

The required message for Marlowe - no longer Harry's sweet Kit - was make plain by Southampton sending for Marlowe's keen rivals - some of Lord Derby's Men and various Hired Men who might all coalesce into a new outfit - and had resulted in Harry discussing scripts, contrary to any Elizabethan propriety, with the man Marlowe had dismissed as a 'mere Shake-scene', sealing the insult by offering Shakespeare more gold than he had seen in his life, in exchange for a mere narrative poem and a copy of some sonnets. The calculated use of insult had been Essex's suggestion, but the detail and execution was all down to a grateful Harry, who had called Essex his amicus certa in re incerta. 

Adopting a new protegé from an even more plebian background than Marlowe's - Shakespeare having never attended either university - would be the perfect snub to Marlowe and ensure Cecil House would be rid of the impertinent pest forever. Even if Will Shakespeare didn't seem as happy as one might expect, given his hundredfold rise in income. Essex had never asked, but suspected that not only was sodomy never considered by either, but that that absence was all part of the calculation.

Shakepeare had been left feeling rather grubby by the encounter, but was hardly in a position to refuse, living hand-to-mouth as he was - the money from Venus enabled him to buy in as a Sharer when Hunsdon's Men officially came into being.

By early 1593, Shakespeare was somewhat reconciled with Marlowe, as they both adapted similar plots yet again, into very different yet successful plays. However Shakespeare couldn't feel he could trust Southampton, even as he embellished the dedication to him for Lucrece, and the rumours of Southampton's involvement with the Danvers brothers and potential opposition to the State didn't make him any happier. So after the second payment, Shakepeare had resolved never to meet Southampton again - and now, to inherit a boy from him!

And the boy was kin to Kit Marlowe! As soon as it was known Robin Poley had been there in that inn in Deptford, it was clear Marlowe's life were to be forfeit sooner or later. Shakespeare had been right scared, 'frit', he’d admitted, stammering in his Worcestershire accent in front of his betters, and not altogether unhappy that Essex had noticed; Essex certainly had the practical brains of the pair, whatever Southampton might be as a scholar. Certainly the purse and the kind words had been Essex's suggestion. When Lucrece was published the following year, Shakespeare tried to ignore it and focus on new plays, instead. He knew what everyone said about Southampton, and what the long hair implied, and wanted no part of such talk, even if it were less dangerous than the more-likely Catholicism.

Essex hoped that would be the last they need worry about the boy and Marlowe, if not the vermin, Poley. He worried about the Queen's continued lack of heir and the power of his father-in-law Walsingham at Court, against that of voices of moderation such as his father-figure Burghley. He vowed to ingratiate himself more with her Majesty; Leicester had brought fun and laughter to her Court, and in turn acquired power. Surely he, Essex, could make use of his position on the Privy Council and do the same, now Leicester was dead? It would, perhaps, be the best way to protect his daft, book-besotted little 'brother'.


End file.
